Course 3: Let’s Paint with Bacteria

Proteins are the most powerful and versatile tools in the synthetic biology toolbox. In this lesson, we’ll see what it takes to express a protein in bacteria. As an example, we’ll look at chromoproteins, simple short proteins that function as pigments in a variety of beautiful colors. Bacteria that express a chromoprotein show a visible color change, allowing us to track our synthetic genes with the naked eye and without fancy instruments. We’ll go deeper into how to handle and store transformed bacteria, how to verify the presence of a new gene, and how to model the expression of proteins in bacteria.